The bottom line is that they saw something which CONVINCED them that they saw the real Jesus after his death. That's the bottom line and that is what Fact #3 says. So if this was going to be a stumbling block, then I was very willing to stick with the language in Fact #3.

How much more gracious and accomodating and fair can I be? I wrote my response to Kcrady before I came in here out of curiousity and before you posted the above comment to my latest post to him. So why is this an issue at all?

It is an issue, I think, for the following reason.

Your point is, as you say, that the disciples saw a person that they believed to be Jesus. Fine. But we need to look at the justification for that belief. At one end of the scale, it is possible that a disciple saw a vague shape disappearing into the darkness that walked like Jesus, and from that point on believed he really had seen Jesus. His belief would be sincere, but would say little about the reality of what he saw - we have all, I'm sure, thought we saw a friend only to find we were mistaken.

So the issue is on how justified their beliefs actually were - and that is why the question of "did they see (someone) twice, for a few minutes (a la Mark) or consistently for 40 days (a la Acts)" becomes so important. I honestly think it is vital that you and Kcrady agree just exactly how much exposure to the person claiming to be Jesus you will accept the disciples actually had. Given that in many cases, as I said, they initially did NOT think it was Jesus until he said "hey guys, I'm Jesus", it is an important question. An imposter, for example, might be able to fool them for a few minutes, a few hours.....but its less likely for over a month.

THAT is why it is so important we know exactly how much contact we are talking about.

Are you looking for excuses to be confrontational and contrary and contentious?

Hopefully the above explains why I'm not just raising it for the sake of being a c- whatever. I regard it as an extremely pertinent part of the debate. If my tone was strong, perhaps it reflects my irritation that despite meeting all your requirements for answering additional questions, it has been 2 weeks since you last responded in "our" debate.....

It seems there can only be two choices available in such a case. Either reserve judgment about the Resurrection, or agree that the Resurrection is the best explanation. What other choice is there if you can't produce a natural explanation that is more reasonable than the Resurrection hypothesis?

Forget the 40 days then!!! I've already told Kcrady that if this is going to be a stumbling block, then forget that entire specific description which he had concerns with about the 40 days. Isn't that simple?

Fran, it's not the "40 days" that's the stumbling block. If it's a historical fact that the vast majority of historians accept, then provide citations. If you can cite one mainstream secular or other-religion (Jewish, Hindu, etc.) scholar/historian who accepts as a historical fact that Jesus lived with his disciples, abruptly appearing and disappearing (teleportation) eating, letting them explore his wounds with their hands, fishing, ascending into the sky, etc., then I will accept that any proposed naturalistic explanation needs to incorporate an explanation for Jesus' post-mortem tangible presence, ability to teleport and/or phase through solid matter[1] etc.. If you can't--if your consensus of historians does not accept these events as historical facts, then I do not think a naturalistic explanation needs to explain such accounts beyond counting them as examples of the progressive growth of legend.

Nutshell: I do not think the skeptic is required to explain how Jesus could appear physically to his disciples, let them touch him, etc. if your "consensus of historians" does not even accept such things as historical fact.

They were also willing to throw out and leave behind they're MOST CHERSIHED beliefs and rituals and cultural IDENTITY as Jews to accept that Jesus was literally resurrected and had appeared before them... and ate with them... and walked with them... and fished with them... and talked with them... and spent 40 days with them.

They got to CLOSELY EXAMINE the evidence before them. As I did in here about what you wrote to me.

>snip<

They had that very hard evidence and 40 days of living with Jesus after His Resurrection to know the difference between bad memory and good memory. Between perception and hard evidence. Between wishful thinking and reality. They saw something spectacular... spectacular evidence that they were willing to lose everything and be tortured and killed rather than back down.

Can you not see the enormous gulf between the two statements?

Statement #1 could easily refer to ecstatic visions like Paul's, or various sorts of hallucinations, or disciples identifying other people (like the person they met on the road to Emmaus) as "Jesus" in retrospect, motivated by a passionate desire to believe that their beloved Master had been raised from the dead and that their dedication of their lives to him and his mission had not been in vain. Or (to be fair) actual apparitions of an exalted spiritual Christ comparable to Marian apparitions in Catholicism, the Christ/Logos manifesting through other people (the guy on the road to Emmaus), etc. Or the actual nature of whatever appearances or apparitions of Christ convinced his followers could be unknown--all that's known is that the early Christians believed in a resurrected Christ on the basis of some (unspecified) sort of manifestations some of them believed they experienced.

Statement #1 is the sort of thing I think a majority of Bible scholars and historians could probably accept as a historical fact, i.e., that Jesus' followers had experiences of some sort (quite possibly subjective, ecstatic visions or hallucinations) that convinced them that he had risen from the dead.

Statement #2 requires a whole other order of explanation. I very much doubt that scholars who are not Evangelical Christians accept as a fact that Jesus appeared in tangible form to his disciples for 40 days after his death, teleporting around, changing his appearance to look like other people, etc.. I'm willing to be corrected on that score though. If it's true that most historians/Bible scholars (regardless of their religious positions) do accept these accounts as accurate history, then I'm sure you will be able to cite an example or two.

If you can't, then you don't get to invoke Statement #2 as if it were equivalent to Statement #1. That's goalpost moving.

Analogy:

Statement #1: Travis Walton was missing for five days, and claims to have spent that time aboard a flying saucer. His friends claimed to have seen the saucer strike him with a beam of light before they fled and returned to discover that he was missing.

Statement #2: Travis Walton lived aboard a flying saucer for five days. He sat in its command chair, handled the vessel's controls, encountered and spoke with aliens and humans, and underwent a medical examination.

As far as I know, there are no UFO researchers, skeptic or believer, who would not accept Statement #1 as a fact. That does not mean that all UFO researchers accept Statement #2 as a fact. It's much easier for a UFO skeptic to explain Statement #1 ("Travis Walton and his friends are lying") than to explain Statement #2 ("Um...the CIA built a spaceship set, drugged Walton and put him in it, then used actors and animatronics to represent the humans and aliens respectively?").

This is why I'm asking you to stipulate exactly what Four (or however many) Facts your consensus of historians (including non-Christians) actually accepts. If they accept that the disciples lived with post-mortem Jesus for 40 days physically examining his wounds, etc., then fine. Just show that they do, and give some kind of summary of their basis for doing so. If you can, that would be part of Fact #3 and a skeptic like me would need to explain it naturally in order to show that no paranormal explanation (divine miracle, aliens, Satan trying to trick people into abandoning Judaism, etc.) is necessary.

If they don't accept the Doubting Thomas story etc. as historical fact (opting for Statement #1), then a natural explanation doesn't have to incorporate tangible appearances of Jesus alive after his death. Your tactic so far has been to assert that the scholars accept Statement #1 (which may well be true), but then treat Statement #2 as if it were equivalent to and/or incorporated within Statement #1, when the consensus of scholars may not (and AFAIK, do not) accept Statement #2 as historical fact or equivalent to their actual consensus.

He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.-– Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Also, I noticed the following sentence (many, many times in a variety of wordings) which is quite telling to Fran's bias:

Quote from: Fran

The debate is not about whether someone can come up with a natural explanation... it has always been about coming up with a natural explanation that is MORE REASONABLE... and EXPLAINS BETTER the FMF than the Resurrection hypothesis.

If you have a resurrection hypothesis, then you have to be working towards a method of explaining such a phenomenon.

"A hypothesis (from Greek ????????; plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ?????????? – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose." For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot be satisfactorily explained with the available scientific theories. Even though the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are often used synonymously in common and informal usage, a scientific hypothesis is not the same as a scientific theory – although the difference is sometimes more one of degree than of principle."[1]

Fran doesn't have a clue about what hypothesis means, nor does he have a clue as to how he would test it even if he really had one. Claiming a resurrection happened in this context begs the question as to how you would explain the workings of this phenomenon. He has no methodology in place to test and explain the workings of a resurrection.

In other words - he's clueless.

Fran dear - please stop using the word hypothesis when you clearly can't use it in the proper context. It offends many of us when you do this.

He's either a complete idiot, a compulsive liar or a highly-accomplished troll - a troll shaman, I would say.

He nitpicks over others' use of colourful language, complaining about the most pathetic slights and kicking and screaming until he gets his way - like some Political Correctness Nazi who attempts to censor every word and phrase that could possibly be considered offensive by anyone. He overuses ALL CAPS and repeats words for emphasis when it is totally unnecessary in forum discourse, and sounds like he's trying to give a lecture. He drowns people in acres more verbiage than could ever be considered necessary to make a point, presumably in the hopes that people will get tired of talking to him and go away, but without ever making any substantive point that withstands critical scrutiny. He's lately learned the neat trick of trying to bury people in (often false) accusations of logical fallacies. He flips from stronger assertions to weaker ones when the stronger assertions are challenged, then flips back to the stronger ones when he thinks no-one will notice.

Add to that his frequent absences when pressed on any topic in which he's received a thorough drubbing, only to turn up like a bad penny weeks or months later and carry on making his assertions as if nothing has happened, and what we have here is a genuine, bona fide, 100%, absolute cretin with less integrity than a used-car salesman, whose tactics are deliberately obfuscatory.

I wonder why any of you - including the forum staff - bother with this fool. As a wise new forum member said, "Swimming upstream against poor arguments garners nothing but exhaustion."

It seems there can only be two choices available in such a case. Either reserve judgment about the Resurrection, ...

Yes Fran, and what have I told you over and over and over again? We don't have to provide answers to these ancient riddles if we don't feel there is enough evidence. Did you, perhaps, maybe, finally get it? I know it's probably too much to expect, but I can always hope.

All we have to say is "I don't know, I don't think there is enough evidence to make a definitive statement - come back when you can demonstrate resurrections can actually happen in front of a group of researchers in a laboratory environment"

Six times in my prior post I said I was willing to drop the specific description of his followers eating and fishing, etc with a post-mortem Jesus. Six times. It is actually seven times if I count my response to Anfauglir in the comment thread. So why are you still bringing it up?

Fact #3 says: "On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead." It doesn't mention 40 days or eating or fishing or talking. Indeed, I specifically said this was their written testimony of what they experienced.

I have to ask, how is one supposed to address a supposed "fact" if one is being discouraged from discussing the so-called evidence? This is a nonsense. Fran simply has no clue how to conduct a debate without trying to privilege his own position and put it beyond the scope of critical inquiry at every unprintable opportunity.

only if the testimony of the witness is critical would a person want to know the circumstances under which the observations were made.I gather that Fran is trying to narrow the "various circumstances" down to the point where only certain aspects of the "various circumstances" are legitimate.

only if the testimony of the witness is critical would a person want to know the circumstances under which the observations were made.I gather that Fran is trying to narrow the "various circumstances" down to the point where only certain aspects of the "various circumstances" are legitimate.

That's no good if he's attempting to cherry-pick. The credibility of a witness rests on the entirety of the claim; if a witness starts making extraordinary claims, selectively stripping them out does not make the witness more credible. It merely makes the person doing the selecting less credible, in that they're ignoring adverse evidence.

1) Fran's scholarly consensus--which resurrection-appearance accounts (if any) do experts in the field find credible (i.e., which ones are included in "Fact #3")?

2) Assuming (by Fran's reaction) that the scholarly consensus does not accept all of the Resurrection accounts (i.e, rejecting the Doubting Thomas story, etc.), why do they reject these accounts and what impact does that have on the credibility of the "witness" of the Gospels as a whole with regard to the alleged resurrection of Jesus?

Until now, Fran has been trying to imply that the scholarly consensus accepted the Doubting Thomas story and the Acts account ("They lived with him for 40 days...") as historical fact. The ease with which he has been compelled to retreat from that position indicates that his vaunted scholarly consensus does not count the Doubting Thomas story and the other similar accounts (living with the disciples for an extended time, fishing with them, eating, etc.) as historical fact.

That being the case, the scope of "Fact #3" is considerably reduced from what it would be if it included such things as Thomas sticking his fingers in the resurrected Jesus' wounds. This relates to the issue of what a naturalistic explanation of the 4MF would actually have to explain, assuming the 4MF are accepted as historical facts. This is a distinct issue from a cross-examination of the Gospel accounts as a whole as part of a discussion of the credibility of the Gospel accounts as history.

In the first case, the issue is to decide which elements of the Gospel resurrection accounts (if any) are accepted by historians and Bible scholars as historically credible or as the basis for a "fact" that some of the earliest Christians claimed to have experienced a resurrected Jesus, and that this was the motive power for the foundation and early spread of Christianity. As I understand it, these historians would accept that early Christians had these beliefs and some of them claimed various experiences of post-mortem Jesus, but that the "extraordinary claims" that they (the historians) do not accept could represent a later accretion of legend. In paring those down, the scholars would be trying to get to the "kernel of fact" buried within the matrix of legend, just like scholars of the Trojan War would try to sort out the real history from the Illiad's myth and legend.

The second approach, "the credibility of a witness rests on the entirety of the claim," seems to me to be more oriented toward debunking the Gospels as a whole by pointing to historically-unsupported extraordinary claims as evidence that the narratives themselves are not credible. This approach would be more like an attempt to debunk the 4MF themselves (and the consensus of Fran's scholars) rather than finding a naturalistic explanation for the elements the scholars accept as genuine history.

Logged

"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

Fact #3 says: "On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead." It doesn't mention 40 days or eating or fishing or talking. Indeed, I specifically said this was their written testimony of what they experienced. Fact #3 enjoys a near unimanous judgement of being classified as a historical fact, from the vast majority of Biblical Scholars. Jesus' followers experienced an appearance of Jesus alive from the dead. And the disciples tell us what they experienced.

If we are not going to discuss the actual written testimony of what the disciples claim to have experienced, then what evidence do we actually have that they experienced anything?

If we throw out the disciples' claims of what went on, we essentially strike through ALL the evidence for a resurrected Jesus, and all we are left with are people that (maybe) died for their beliefs. What beliefs? We don't know, we're not looking at the evidence. We could just as equally say that what they saw were visions experienced while they slept of the return of Jesus, visions so strong that they were utterly convincing.

You cannot claim as fact "the disciples saw Jesus" and at the same time claim that the detail of what they saw is both irrelevant and unexaminable!!

The hard part is determining which part of the Gospel accounts are authentic as "the disciples' testimony" and what was added later as the oral tales grew in the telling. That "Fact #3" is non-detailed is an indication that Fran's scholarly consensus does not extend to any claim that the Gospels are accurate in their details about what the disciples claimed about the Resurrection. That's hardly surprising, since the Gospel details conflict with one another, and more details creep into Gospels as they date later. The original ending of Mark's Gospel (the earliest canonical Gospel) doesn't have any post-mortem appearances at all, only a declaration by an angel that Jesus had been raised from death.

As Fran explained in his replies, scholars can use a chain of deductions to come to the conclusion that belief in the Resurrection traces back fairly close to the time of the alleged event. This sort of thing is arguably good enough to substantiate the existence of the belief early on, but it seems awfully weak as evidence that the belief in Jesus' resurrection is true.

Logged

"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

...As Fran explained in his replies, scholars can use a chain of deductions to come to the conclusion that belief in the Resurrection traces back fairly close to the time of the alleged event. This sort of thing is arguably good enough to substantiate the existence of the belief early on, but it seems awfully weak as evidence that the belief in Jesus' resurrection is true.

So basically Fran is saying that the record of the belief existed around the time the belief was conceptualized, but this record or belief does not relate to what really happened?

Upon further reflection I think that Fran is suggesting that the record of the belief not the belief itself is sufficient for the belief to be credible.Which might go back to one of my other posts way back when I suggested that if the records of the beliefs that jesus existed were sufficient to prove the existence of jesus then any lack of record or a contradictory record is sufficient to disprove the existence of jesus.In other words there could be a million records of jesus's existence but that isn't all records, therefore jesus did not exist.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Logged

He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.-– Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

It sounds like he has only recently learned that it is a logical fallacy and doesn't actually mean the same thing as "raises the question." So now he's just flinging it out whenever he comes across something he doesn't want to answer.

Each FMF in the Resurrection hypothesis meets two criteria: They are well evidenced and nearly every scholar accepts them.

WHAT!

What scholars, where?Who are they?Which ones don't?If they don't, why don't they?Why won't the minority of these scholars (whoever they are) accept what the majority does? Are they good reasons?What reasons?Are they the same reasons the critically-thinking atheists here don't accept them?